


Sonnet

by MaddyHughes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bets & Wagers, M/M, Poetry, Romance, Shakespearean Sonnets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:59:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyHughes/pseuds/MaddyHughes
Summary: @mizumohno (@starkaryen) asked:"Where's the fic in which Will recites a poem as he touches and kisses Hannibal lightly. Hannibal isn't allowed to touch, not yet, so he's just lying on bed or the couch and Will whispers the lines of the poem..."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starkaryen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkaryen/gifts), [murdergatsby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/murdergatsby/gifts).



“Do you want to bet?” asks Will. They’ve each had some single malt. There’s a fire in the fireplace. It’s romantic as hell. Of course they’re arguing.

“Yes,” says Hannibal, with the maddening manner of a man who never, ever makes a bet that he doesn’t know he is going to win. “What shall we bet?”

“If I win, you’re not allowed to do anything the entire time I’m doing it. You can’t talk. You can’t move unless I move you. You have to stay completely still.”

“All right.”

“What do you want, if you win?”

Hannibal’s lips twitch into a smile. “I’ll decide after I win. If I win.”

This is incredibly dangerous—to agree something with Hannibal Lecter without knowing the parameters. Will nods anyway.

Because he knows he’s going to win.

“Stand up,” Will says.

Hannibal gets up out of his armchair and stands, in the flickering light of the fire, with his arms loosely by his sides. Will stands too. He goes over to Hannibal and pushes his jacket off his shoulders, pushing it down his arms and removing it.

“Have you started?” Hannibal asks as Will drapes the jacket over the arm of a chair.

Will holds his finger to his lips for silence. He stands in front of Hannibal, holding his gaze steadily.

Then he begins.

“ _Let me not to the marriage of true minds_  
_Admit impediments_.”

Hannibal recognizes the sonnet right away. His face softens at the lines, and Will knows why. Theirs is a marriage of true minds. It has been since the beginning. And there have been many, many impediments.

Will takes a small step closer. He takes hold of Hannibal’s tie.

“ _Love is not love_  
_That alters when it alteration finds_.” Unknotting tie, slipping it from his collar.

The waistcoat next.

“ _Or bends with the remover_ —” the shirt, unbuttoned, discarded— “ _to remove_.”

He pauses to look at his lover’s naked chest in the firelight. How the orange light gleams on the planes of his shoulders, throws the line of his collarbone into stark relief. The silver in the hair on his chest: the nipples that are hard, though it isn’t cold, not with the fire.

Will reaches out to touch with one finger the scar left by Dolarhyde’s bullet.

“ _O no_ ,” he says, running his finger over the puckered skin. “ _It is an ever-fixed mark_.”

He puts his hands on Hannibal’s upper arms. He does not imagine the slight sudden intake of breath at the touch. The goosebumps that rise up on Hannibal’s arms.

Gently he turns Hannibal around, so that the fire lights up his back, instead.

“ _An ever-fixed mark_ ,” he says again. This time he touches the brand on his back. The Verger crest, burned into Hannibal’s smooth skin.

“ _That looks on tempests and is never shaken_.”

But Will is shaken by this mark. He always is. The idea of Hannibal helpless, treated like an animal. His mind shies away from it.

Instead, he takes Hannibal’s wrists. His lover allows him to pull them behind his back, as if the span of Will’s hands were handcuffs.

“ _It is the star to every wandering bark_ ,” he continues, running his thumbs over the scars that Matthew made on Hannibal’s wrists, at Will’s bidding.

They are constellations: Hannibal’s scars, Will’s scars. If you put them together, drew lines between them, they would form a new creature, mythological and powerful.

Like something the world has never known.

He releases Hannibal’s wrists. His hands fall to his sides, impassive. But Hannibal is moved. Will knows him well enough to know that.

Will closes the small gap between them. He fits his clothed body against Hannibal’s half-naked one, chest to back. He’s aroused, of course, and it presses against Hannibal’s ass. And he’s only seven lines into the sonnet.

Will speaks the next words into Hannibal’s ear, close and intimate.

“ _Whose worth’s unknown, though his height be taken_.”

A kiss to his ear. His neck. Hannibal stands unmoving as Will moves around him, hands trailing his naked belly, lips dropping kisses as he speaks.

“ _Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lip_ s—” a kiss to Hannibal’s lips, short and fleeting— “ _and cheeks_ —”

The kiss on his cheek is almost chaste. Almost. Except that Will’s hands are busy. They reach down and unbutton Hannibal’s trousers. Slip inside and rub along the length of Hannibal’s erection.

“ _Within his bending…sickle’s_ …” He can’t help a smile. “… _compass…come_.”

A squeeze at the last word. Hannibal bites back a moan.

Will strokes. Teases.

“ _Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks_  
_But bears it out, even to the edge…of doom_.”

A single finger, feathering across the sensitive tip. Hannibal does not speak, or move. He is holding his breath. Every muscle, though still, is trembling.

Will wonders whether it’s his hands, or his words, that are causing Hannibal’s excitement.

“ _If this be error, and upon me proved_ ,” he says against Hannibal’s lips, “ _I never writ_ …”

And a kiss. Warm and fervent, as he breathes the final phrase into Hannibal’s mouth.

“ _Nor no man ever loved_.”

And at that last rhyme, Hannibal breaks. He seizes Will’s face in his hands and kisses him, deep and rough and desperate, and pulls him down onto the rug in front of the fire.

Afterwards, both naked now, no longer arguing, Hannibal runs a languid hand over Will’s body.

“Sonnet one hundred and sixteen,” Hannibal says. “It was never one of my favourites, until tonight.”

“And now?”

“I never want to stop hearing it.” Hannibal kisses his shoulder. The corner of his mouth. 

“What would you have asked for,” says Will, “if I hadn’t been able to recite an entire poem from memory? If you’d won the bet?"

“Oh,” says Hannibal, drawing Will closer into the circle of his arms, the circle of the firelight. The two of them who have been to the edge of doom, and whose love has survived.

“Believe me,” says Hannibal. “I won.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sonnet 116  
> William Shakespeare
> 
> Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
> Admit impediments. Love is not love  
> Which alters when it alteration finds,  
> Or bends with the remover to remove.  
> O no! it is an ever-fixed mark  
> That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  
> It is the star to every wand'ring bark,  
> Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  
> Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
> Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
> Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
> But bears it out even to the edge of doom.  
> If this be error and upon me prov'd,  
> I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.


End file.
